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Is free speech suppressed on the internet's main public squares

Yes 56 53.85%
 
No 44 42.31%
 
Undecided 4 3.85%
 
Total:104
IcaroRibeiro on 25 April 2022
Dulfite said:
farlaff said:

His recent support of the ridiculous action by the truckers in Canada makes feel the same way about him. In the past, I thought he was more in a kind of a middle ground, but not anymore.

5-10 years ago, and certainly in the 90's (as I say Musk is more of a 90's democrat), the main stream democratic party would have never said people should have to wear masks or get vaccines for something that kills less than 1% of the people that have symptoms in the first place, let alone those that don't exibit any symptoms and therefore don't get tested. The right hasn't moved further right, nor has the middle moved further right, but the left has gone waaaay left in America in a ridiculously short time. And not just on Covid. 

Bold, this is fairly high number actually. Current death rate is 1.2%

If you have no measure you will end in a situation where everybody gets the virus and then 1% of global population (over 80 million people) dies. This would be a catastrophe beyond any war in human History. Getting vaccines and wearing masks is a cheap price to prevent such disaster 



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Jumpin on 26 April 2022

“Before we introduce the new CEO and owner of Twitter, please remember to avoid direct eye contact, sudden movements, coughing, or negative facial expressions. And now, the richest man in the world, Elon Musk!”



I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.

Jumpin on 06 May 2022

Question: is this the biggest midlife crisis purchase in world history?



I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.

G2ThaUNiT on 06 May 2022

Definitely biggest midlife crisis purchase in world history

Social media, and the internet in general, has been among the best/worst inventions in the history of mankind.

I'm constantly amazed how as a civilization we've never been so connected, but as a society we've never been so disconnected. There have always been problems, and always will be, but social media over the years has amplified sooooooo many different issues. Social media started out pretty innocently enough and was meant to be fun with your "just ate a sandwich" type posts to nowadays being political and social issue hellscapes where everyone and anyone has the ability to express their own opinion regardless of how extreme it might be. And that's just one example.

Social media has been a Pandora's box since the beginning and we're really seeing the damaging effects it has caused on humanity as a whole. I'm personally down to Instagram, YouTube, this site, and.....Steam I guess if you consider that social media? And that list will probably get smaller as time goes on. So good riddance to Twitter as there's really no saving it at this point or way to make it better that will make a majority of the userbase happy regardless of who owns it.

Last edited by G2ThaUNiT - on 06 May 2022

Soundwave on 06 May 2022
EnricoPallazzo said:
Shadow1980 said:

There are multiple problems with that line of reasoning.

First off, why should a discussion board or website lose their right to free association simply because they got popular enough? The state would be the only entity capable of enforcing that, and why should the state have that power? I totally get giving the state the power to prohibit businesses from pumping toxic waste in the ocean or engaging in wage theft, but telling a website that it can't kick someone off of their property for using racial slurs or spreading dangerous conspiracies is not something I think the state should be doing. While private property rights are not absolute, restrictions on their use should be narrowly-defined and have a very, very good reason for existing (e.g., preventing direct harm to others).

Second, the law by necessity frequently deals in arbitrary limits, and using popularity to determine a line above which a website is stripped of their right free association would be one of those arbitrary things. How will popularity be measured? Total active users? Average daily post counts? Once we've determined what we'll be using as our criteria, what's the threshold? 100,000? A million? Ten million? Why that threshold and not some other threshold? What if it eventually gets lowered to "one" and therefore no website can have a code of conduct governing user behavior?

If a site or board cannot have a code of conduct in their TOS, that would effectively force every board to allow just about anything that wasn't illegal, their moderators largely toothless. Every one of them could have the potential to become like 4-Chan's /pol/ board. Website owners need the ability to have rules dictating what constitutes unacceptable behavior on their site in order to foster a reasonably healthy and productive community, rather than one that's just some anything-goes cesspit that drives away all but the worst sorts of people.

Giving governments the power to limit freedom of association like how some are proposing opens up a huge can of worms and could potentially set a dangerous precedent.

I think part of the problem in this discussion, as it is usual, is liberals not understanding what conservatives want, and conservatives not understanding what liberals want.

Agree 100% a solution based on a proper law will open a can of worms/pandora box and it is the worst solution ever.

I am pretty sure Musk and most of the people that would like to have free speech on twitter and reddit are not against having community rules. People dont want it to become 4chan (although I see some value in 4chan) where people call each other (insert here word that cannot be spoken today) or talk about murdering people to install a comunist state, rage ethnical cleansing to have a white state only, etc. And to have fairness of treatment and not double standards from "fact checkers" or closing of community/members matters.

Anyway, I dont think the government should jump in to regulate it, in general it only causes more trouble than solutions. The solution is much simpler than that, is people that do not agree with the platform to just stop using it and look for solutions elsewhere, is possible. If all famous people that complain about twitter (including Musk) closed their account and opened a new one in another platform it would bring millions of people to other places.

Of course.. if those other options are allowed to exist. Unfortunately, and this is a very direct criticism of the radical left actions, some try to shut down those options. 

"You dont like it here, build your own platform"

"Hey this platform you created do not follow what I believe, shut it down"

"You did not shut it down? Lets presure government and banks to not allow it to exist, lets cut your financials ties so we strangle you financially"

To be honest I think this all sucks because it only creates more division and I would prefer everyone to be able to expose it's ideas everywhere with no fear of retaliation or cancelling. But a divided world is a reality and I think there is no coming back unfortunately.

People who espouse for "ethnic cleansing" deserve zero platform anywhere. Fuck them and fuck any moron that thinks "that's dur hur just another opinion dude, to counter balance people who want free health care", as if those things are fucking equivalent. 



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IcaroRibeiro on 06 May 2022
gtotheunit91 said:

Definitely biggest midlife crisis purchase in world history

Social media, and the internet in general, has been among the best/worst inventions in the history of mankind.

I'm constantly amazed how as a civilization we've never been so connected, but as a society we've never been so disconnected. There have always been problems, and always will be, but social media over the years has amplified sooooooo many different issues. Social media started out pretty innocently enough and was meant to be fun with your "just ate a sandwich" type posts to nowadays being political and social issue hellscapes where everyone and anyone has the ability to express their own opinion regardless of how extreme it might be. And that's just one example.

Social media has been a Pandora's box since the beginning and we're really seeing the damaging effects it has caused on humanity as a whole. I'm personally down to Instagram, YouTube, this site, and.....Steam I guess if you consider that social media? And that list will probably get smaller as time goes on. So good riddance to Twitter as there's really no saving it at this point or way to make it better that will make a majority of the userbase happy regardless of who owns it.

You are as dramatic as people who use Twitter 



Jumpin on 06 May 2022
Soundwave said:

People who espouse for "ethnic cleansing" deserve zero platform anywhere. Fuck them

Is white washing considered ethnic cleansing? :D

Last edited by Jumpin - on 06 May 2022

I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.

ConservagameR on 07 May 2022
Jumpin said:

Question: is this the biggest midlife crisis purchase in world history?

I'd argue it's one of the biggest FU money moves in history, tied up with the biggest shadow like ban pre maneuver to keep one's self (and others) from being banned (and getting some unbanned).

Slowly but surely buy up shares until you're ready, then make a few larger purchases that make you the largest private shareholder. Then make your moves in a manner which either forces Twitter to sell, or leads to the platform suffering far greater than it already was if they don't. Twitter itself is partially to thank.

It looks like Elon has had a lot built up that he's wanted to say on Twitter, based on more recent tweets, aware that he's not the only one, yet hasn't been able to express them, knowing that if Twitter is willing and able to ban the President of the US, then there's no stopping them from banning Musk and anything associated with him, like his companies.

If you're someone like Musk, who likely has an idea, or knows other elites think having too much media influence is a major problem, even if some of those elites already have too much media influence (and ownership), and you've got the money, then buying something like Twitter seems kind of obvious, especially from a strategic business perspective.

Now not only can Elon say as he pleases, but he can do so knowing he and his associations will never be punished on one of the most influential platforms ever to exist. As per usual, his genius being put on display along with some of his opponents and dissenters misplaced fearful acknowledgement.

In a world of cancel culture, if you've got the money to buy influence, you buy it, and if you can outright own it, it's your eventual downfall if you don't.



Zkuq on 07 May 2022
ConservagameR said:

Now not only can Elon say as he pleases, but he can do so knowing he and his associations will never be punished on one of the most influential platforms ever to exist. As per usual, his genius being put on display along with some of his opponents and dissenters misplaced fearful acknowledgement.

It's not that easy though. Twitter can't host itself; someone else has to do it. IIRC hosting providers have shown their willingness to stop hosting services they find problematic, and finding a new hosting provider for a service the size of Twitter might not be simple. This should provide Musk some freedom if he so desires, but by no means does this guarantee absolute freedom (even within legal limits, whatever that means for an internationally provided service).



ConservagameR on 07 May 2022
padib said:
Zkuq said:

It's not that easy though. Twitter can't host itself; someone else has to do it. IIRC hosting providers have shown their willingness to stop hosting services they find problematic, and finding a new hosting provider for a service the size of Twitter might not be simple. This should provide Musk some freedom if he so desires, but by no means does this guarantee absolute freedom (even within legal limits, whatever that means for an internationally provided service).

As far as I know, Twitter is on AWS, and Bezos is Musk's direct competitor outside of twitter. I wouldn't be surprised if Musk leveraged his own platforms to bypass the censorship or obstruction. Nowadays people are aware of the monopoly on cloud services and are gearing up against it.

Bezos owns WAPO, Blue Origin, and the Kuiper Project. He's competing with Musk with Twitter, SpaceX, and Starlink. WAPO had an article recently about it being a problem for wealthy private owners to have too much influence through media ownership. This is the same WAPO that was constantly writing legit negative stories about Bezos for years before Bezos realized he couldn't sue them to make them stop, so he just bought them.

I'd love to see Apple and Google ban Twitter from their ecosystems, then have AWS kick them off their servers, just like they all did to Parler.

Go ahead and have big tech ban Twitter. If things aren't obvious yet, they will become blatantly obvious to everyone after that.

It's also highly unlikely that Elon doesn't have a backup plan. He had multiple for just buying Twitter and it's not like he couldn't predict the potential problems that would come afterwards whether he did acquire it, focused on another platform instead, or started his own.

If Parler still exists, which it does, then Twitter certainly could. Mind you, if the Silicon Valley types start playing games like, if we can't have it, neither can you, then there's going to start to be more and more getting bought up and shut down sooner than later.

This is a win win situation for Musk and he knows it. The guy gave up all his coolest stuff and lives like he's middle class for the most part. If he losses 50 billion he's not gunna care much because it'll make him 100 billion+ in sympathy and respect coin soon afterwards.

If Elon get's by unscathed, he wins. If big tech strikes Twitter down, he becomes a martyr.

Last edited by ConservagameR - on 07 May 2022